


Exhaustible

by meriwethersays



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Slow Burn, Spoilers, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, author is making this up as she goes along, probably not canon-compliant on so many levels, relationships are hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:41:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22160509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meriwethersays/pseuds/meriwethersays
Summary: "Be with me," she says, and all the generations of Jedi who came before are there with her.  "Give him the chance to redeem himself."Or, Rey saves Ben and he realizes that dying probably would've been the easier way out of everything he's done.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	1. Space and Time and Mass Resistance

Rey started to come back to herself in pieces -- first the pressure of a hand on her abdomen, the warmth of an arm around her back, the name that leaped from her mouth. The kiss was one thing -- new, impulsive -- but it was his smile that felt like a kick in the chest. She'd never seen him smile before, she realized, and when he started to collapse, it was that smile she grabbed onto to hold him there.  
  
"Be with me," she said, and she was back in that starry sky, all the generations of Jedi who came before were there with her. "Give him the chance to redeem himself."  
They were there, one filmy white shade after the next, stretching back a thousand years. Luke and Leia stood at the front, flanking a middle-aged man. "He died to save you," Luke said. "Isn't that enough?"  
"Luke," said the man. "You know it isn't. You knew it wasn't when you tried to take me off the Death Star alive." It was Darth Vader, Rey realized. Anakin, as he should have been.  
"It's not," Rey said. "There's so much more for him to do." She turned her eyes to Leia. "Leia, please."  
"We can give him a year," Luke said. "If he's started to redeem himself, he'll have longer. If not, he'll be truly dead."  
"We won't disappoint you," Rey promised. She saw Anakin reach his hand out, and then she was back on the stone floor of the temple at Exogal, Ben in her arms. This time, she leaned down and kissed him, long and slow, until the ground shook beneath them again and she pulled back to say, "We have to get out of here."  
"I thought I was dead," Ben said, though he stood with her. "Wait, my leg --" He tested it. "I could barely walk, before."  
"Later," Rey told him. "We'll talk about it later. We have to get out of here, and we have to get you somewhere that isn't around the rest of the Resistance."  
  
It took nearly the rest of their strength to climb up out of the underground temple and stumble back to Rey's X-wing. "It'll be tight, but we'll make do," Rey said. That was an understatement. "I'm going to set you down on the other side of the moon, when we get back. But I'll come back for you, I promise, and we'll find a safe place to go." She felt Ben nod against the back of her neck, and he might've tried to say something, or maybe it was just his lips tracing her spine. Either way, Rey flushed hot in the space-chill of the cockpit as the lines of hyperspace streamed by. A few minutes of silence later, she realized he was asleep.  
  


* * *

Rey didn't love leaving Ben unguarded on the other side of Ajan Kloss's moon, but she couldn't think of a better plan. "I'll be all right for the night," he promised, hand clenched tight around his mother's lightsaber. "Just don't forget about me."  
"I'll come get you tomorrow," Rey told him. "I think I know where we can go. But I can't go without saying goodbye." She paused, suddenly uncertain. It was so much easier to touch him in the heat of the moment, in panic or celebration. Like this, there were too many thoughts crowding into her head, and she waited so long that she had to settle for gripping his hand tight and then stumbling away back to the X-Wing like a coward. She saw him watching her through the filmy cockpit as she sped through preflight checks, and even as she took off, she knew he was still staring after her.  
  
The Resistance base was joyous chaos. She was barely out of the X-Wing before she saw Finn and Poe and grabbed them up into a hug. Everyone smelled like sweat and grease and blood and was solid under her hands, and even though the clamor of all those minds in the Force was beginning to weigh down on her, she didn't let go. She wished she'd never have to. But someone else pulled Poe away into another hug, and Finn said, "Rey, I have to tell you--"  
"I love you too," she said, and it was easy to say to him. "But I don't think either of us means it the way you thought you wanted."  
Finn stepped back. "What?"  
She smiled at him. "I think in your head, I'm the one you're supposed to be in love with."  
"Rey..."  
"Finn. General Finn." She couldn't help another smile at that, even though she wanted Finn to pay attention to what she was trying to say. "You're my best friend," she said. "But you're not in love with me. You just wish you were because it would be easier." She glanced meaningfully at someone else.  
Finn looked like she'd struck him between the eyes with a tree branch. "How did you--don't tell him!"  
"It's yours to tell," she said. "But don't wait too long. Neither of you is very subtle. There's no need to be afraid."  
Finn covered his face with his hands. "Of course," he said. "Of course it couldn't be easy." He shook his head. "Rey, back on the planet, what happened? I thought I felt you - I felt you die." He saw it in her face. "You did, didn't you? How are you here?"  
Under the noise of everyone's celebration, Rey said, "Defeating the Emperor killed me. Ben brought me back."  
"Ben-- Kylo Ren? Kylo Ren saved you? The last I saw, you were fighting to the death!"  
  
"I wish I could explain it all now," Rey said. "But I'm only staying for the celebration tonight. Tomorrow, I have to go."  
"Why? Why can't you stay? We won the war!"  
"It's...a Force thing." Rey met his eyes. "You should practice, while I'm gone. Feeling the Force."  
"Lifting rocks?"  
She laughed. "Yes, lifting rocks." Rey sobered. "I'm--we're going to go somewhere, where he can unlearn the Dark Side. Become a force for good in the galaxy. Try to make up for all the sorrow and destruction. And you know we can't do that here."  
"Nothing I can say will stop you, will it?"  
"I'm afraid not." She laid one palm against his cheek. "Smile, Finn, we won! Life starts anew! The galaxy is free to rebuild!"  
He did smile, because Finn was a fundamentally good person and she could feel his happiness, even through the worry he felt at the idea of her running off to some unknown location to rescue Kylo Ren. "Come on," he said. "You're not getting away without one night of celebration."


	2. let's get inside, out of this weather

Ben was asleep when she landed to pick him up in the morning. Rey wished that he weren't. She could feel it through the Force, the moment he went from dreams to wakefulness, the stab of pain that he felt at seeing the Millennium Falcon. But there was no help for it--when she'd said she was leaving, admitted that ever since Palpatine she'd felt the weight of every living person around her so much more acutely--Lando and Chewie had insisted that she take the ship, and Finn had agreed with such determination that she couldn't say no without having to explain it, something she decidedly did not want to do to anyone other than Finn.

"Come on," she said, when the ramp hit the ground. "I think I found somewhere for us to go, and I don't want anyone to follow us." She wasn't sure whether to apologize for the ship or not.

"I'm coming." Every step Ben took up the ramp sounded heavy, like he was wearing shackles. "Where are we going?"

"There's ration packs and caf if you want some," Rey said. She didn't know where to start. "I found a moon we can stay on. It's green, and it used to be inhabited by colonists but isn't any more."

"That seems ominous," Ben said as they took off. He hovered in the cockpit, apparently unwilling to take one of the seats.

"It was never much of a colony," Rey said. "From what the navicomputer told me, anyway. But there are fields with food, and safe water."

"How long are you expecting to live there?" The Falcon jolted as they left atmosphere and he stumbled against Rey. His bare hand landed on her arm and it felt like a shock of electricity, like the first time they'd managed to touch fingers across the galaxy.

"As long as we have to." Rey triggered the jump to hyperspace and then turned in her pilot's chair to face him. He loomed over her, and when he steadied himself with a hand on her shoulder, she found him standing slotted between her knees. "You're very tall," she said, and then winced as he dropped to his knees in front of her. "Ben, I need to tell you--"

"Tell me what?" He traced the shell of one of her ears with a finger, stroked his thumb across her cheek, and Rey's knees closed around his torso. Ben stared at her as he ghosted his thumb across her lips, apparently hypnotized by the progress of his own hand.

"I persuaded the Jedi to save your life," she said, and the tip of her tongue flicked out across his thumb. She shivered at the faintest taste of salt. "But we only have a year for you to try to redeem yourself."

Ben snatched his hand back. "You did what?" He stood rapidly, stumbling back against the wall. Rey felt the loss of warmth keenly. "How?"

"Your grandfather. Anakin," she said. "He told Luke that Luke was right, that it wasn't enough to die saving someone from the evil you'd created. That you should have the chance to do more. But they only gave us a year."

"A year! To do what? Build an orphanage? Plant crops? What exactly am I supposed to do?" She could feel his rage building, and her own rising to meet it at his scorn.

"I don't know," she said tightly. "I suppose figuring it out is probably part of the challenge. Would you prefer to be dead?"

"No, of course not. I just--didn't realize there were strings attached. I thought we just--got a happy ending. It was stupid." 

The power of his mood swings through the Force, from hurt to want to rage to self-pity, was giving her a pounding headache. "We've got another fifteen minutes in hyperspace," Rey said. "I'm going to have some caf. You should probably eat something."

He followed her as far as the dejarik board and then stopped short. "I used to play Chewbacca," he said. "When I was little, I always won. When I turned six, I started losing all the time. It took me forever to realize that my father had won a bet and used it to make Chewie agree to lose to me for a whole year." Ben traced the board with his hands. She was so used to seeing him wear gloves that even now, it was startling to see the bare skin, the ordinary squared-off fingernails, against a solid surface.

"I've never played," Rey said. "But Finn and Poe used to lose to Chewie all the time." 

"It's a child's game. I'm terrible at it." Ben closed his fingers into fists. "My mo--" He stopped. That wound was too fresh. To break the moment, Rey thrust a steaming cup of caf at him, and he took it in self-defense. He grimaced when he sipped it and said, "I don't know why caf made on this ship always tastes like it came out of a trash compactor."

Rey wanted to scream. How could it have been easier to talk to him when he was the villain half a galaxy away than now, when he was right in front of her? There was this churning desire in her stomach--or maybe that was the caf, it _was_ terrible--and frustration simmering in her heart, and the slightest bit of lingering resentment every time he spoke of his parents. "We're coming out of hyperspace soon," she said, and walked straight back to the cockpit.

Ben followed her. "How are you going to save me," he asked, "when every part of you is in turmoil too?"

"I don't know," Rey admitted, staring outside. "I don't know how to do any of this. I just couldn't let you die." She brought them out of hyperspace above a small, lush moon.

"Thank you," Ben said. "In case I hadn't said that already."

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter titles stolen from DeVotchKa's Exhaustible (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQepeHU6JM4).   
Handwaving how you would cram two people into an X-Wing, because you gotta work with what you've got. Not canon compliant for anyone's backstory (or ages, probably).
> 
> unbeta'd, so feel free to point out errors. Comments much appreciated!


End file.
